Prevention of musculoskeletal disorders among the workers at Port Wine vines cultivation

A high productivity is crucial in the rural production in order to reduce exploitation costs and to increase the international competitiveness of the products. All the organisation of work associated with the grape harvesting and transportation to the processing equipment was implemented with three fundamental objectives:

To reduce, as much as possible, the manual effort associated with the transportation of grapes from the vines to the processing equipment and consequently the risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs);

To increase the productivity of the vine harvesting process;

To assure a high quality harvesting process, avoiding the excess of weight in the transportation of grapes and the consequent crushing of grapes in the buckets, maintaining the quality and integrity of the product.